G080 - Nelson-Kelly, Nikki [DECEASED]

[Latin For Dragula]

DECEASED

Name: Nikki Nelson-Kelly
Gender: Female
Age: 17
Grade: 12
School: George Hunter High School
Hobbies and Interests: Musical Theater, Social Media, Reading, Fantasy, Fashion

Appearance: Standing 5’5” and fluctuating between 185 and 195 pounds, Nikki’s weight is the first thing that people notice about her. She’s been around the edge of obesity since before puberty, so she’s learned to carry herself the best she can in her style of dress, avoiding overly baggy clothes and generally layering for the season, tighter-fit shirts under a jacket, shrug, or casual blouse, darker colors and patterns, and fitted jeans that can take her forever to find in a rack. She sometimes pairs leggings with skirts, but doesn’t usually think she can pull it off. Nikki usually wears at least two pieces of clunky costume jewelry — bracelets or necklaces — and a wide belt if it complements the outfit, and generally sticks to Converses in the summer and ankle boots in the winter. She’s more adept to walking in heels than you may think. On the day of the trip she was wearing light jeans, a white long-sleeved tee with a denim jacket, and black ankle boots with a short chunky heel.

Nikki’s figure is more apple than pear-shaped, carrying her weight above her hips. She has rounded shoulders and a noticeable bust that requires support. Her shape balloons out somewhat at her midsection before tapering down through her hips and legs; Nikki walks with a noticeable sway to her shoulders as a result. She carries deodorant with her pretty much everywhere she goes to try to avoid sweat stains. Above the shoulders, she has a rounded face with fairly attractive features, large green eyes with prominent eyelashes, and a wide smile with straight white teeth. She's got a slight cleft in her nose and wide eyebrows that don't really compliment her face, but Nikki finds plucking them to be a lot of pain and hassle and usually just lets them be. She's adept with foundation makeup to give her skin and even look while also hiding flushing in her cheeks. Her ears are pierced three times on the right and four on the left. Nikki’s hair is a wavy reddish-blonde with noticeable volume, and she devotes a lot of time to getting it to fall just right around her shoulders

Biography: Nicole Nelson-Kelly, who has never gone by Nicole outside of official use, is the oldest of two children of Jackson Nelson and Kristanna Kelly, was born in Virginia Beach, and moved to Chattanooga 8 years ago when her parents decided to move, reasons including to be closer to Jackson’s family, the lower cost of living during the housing crisis, and Jackson and Kristanna’s decision to finally look to get “real jobs”. Jackson worked freelance IT and had been a part of various failed startups, while Kristanna was a graphics designer and retail manager. Although both of them and Nikki enjoyed living near the ocean and the more bohemian lifestyle of the beach, both Jackson and Kristanna were struggling to stay afloat in a recession that resulted in Jackson failing to find hours, Kristanna having hers cut, and the reveal that Kristanna was pregnant with what would be Nikki’s younger brother Noah.

Nikki, although always a bit on the chubby side since babyhood, was active and outgoing as a young child, vacillating between precocious and bratty depending on who you ask. Although her parents were in their early 30's when the had her, having married two years prior, both Jackson and Kristanna favoured a nurturing, permissive parenting style light on discipline and organization. They were careful to nurture Nikki's interests in outdoor play, reading, and the arts, but were not big on hard and fast rules or deadlines, leading her to spend a lot of downtime on the computer from a young age. Jackson did the bulk of the parenting in Nikki's early years as he would work often from home and schedule his work around raising Nikki, while Kristanna worked odd hours and a lot of weekends. The two of them rarely argued or fought, though Nikki can sometimes finds her parents relationship a bit weird, like they were more best friends than a married couple.

In her early school years, Nikki loved music, arts, crafts, and anything creative, although she never seemed to show too much talent in any specific area. She was naturally smart, but wouldn't apply herself too much in harder classes like math, doing well enough to pass easily but never sitting near the top of the class. She was a big-time reader from a young age, gravitating to children's and teens fantasy series from Harry Potter to the Maze Runner and Divergent series, and creating imaginative if not particularly-well written stories. Although she liked to run and play and had a large group of friends at school, she wasn't big into organized sports and never saw herself getting involved there, and had an appetite from an early age, using spending money for both sweet and savoury foods, and an instant dislike for food that was considered too "healthy".

Following the move to Chattanooga, the family's fortunes would seem to improve on several levels after a rough first couple years. Jackson had originally taken a sales job with Fortune 500 Company UNUM, where his uncle was able to get him in on the ground floor, but he still kept up the dream of managing his own company and in 2014 launched a cloud-based scheduling software called TrySky that slowly emerged as a legitimately successful company. By 2018 the program had become a market leader for small businesses and has now expanded to a dozen employees in Chattanooga's expanding tech centre, and Jackson and Kristanna had a moderately sized home in Chattanooga's gated community.

Nikki took the move well, but became steadily less active and, coupled with her parents' approaches and work schedules, found herself both gaining weight and having trouble fitting in in school. She began spending more and more time on the Internet and reading. She graduated through the years to more adult and young-adult fantasy series like Game of Thrones and Throne of Glass, and and got into musical theatre as a pre-teen through Disney movies and videos on YouTube of shows like Wicked and Kinky Boots. She joined up with the Drama Club in junior high both to pursue her hobby and to find more friends, and played ensemble parts in productions both years, although her enjoyment of theater hasn't led her to developing a great singing voice. Still, she can be loud, expressive, and in tune, so she was a welcome part of productions. Nikki's musical tastes tend to the bombast and occasionally cheesy, and as she got older she became an equally big fan of rock operas works like We Will Rock You and the music of Jim Steinman.

Moving into high school after junior high and getting full on into puberty, Nikki began trying to both find her way socially and aesthetically. She spend a lot of time searching up fashion tips for plus-size girls and experimenting with styles and fashions, buying new clothes as much as she could, which was helped by her parents' increasing incomes around this time. With her parents help, Nikki tried various diets and visited a nutritionist to address her burgeoning weight problems, and her parents began working to cook healthier meals at home, but she still snacks and makes unhealthy choices more often than not, so while she's mostly stopped gaining weight, she hasn't been losing any recently, either. She's noticed some recent changes including running out of breath more often than usual and an increased need to urinate, and is worried that they might be the onset of long-term health problems including diabetes, but hasn't admitted this to anyone or gotten tested out of fear of what the results might be.

At home, Nikki's never felt her relationship with her family to be strained, and she's accepted her parents' somewhat lackadaisical nature to their lives and even found some of it rubbing off on her. Nikki would absolutely say that she loves her parents and brother; they're just not the type of family to go around saying "I love you." She kids around with her younger brother Noah a lot and babysits him on occasion, and joins in on some of his bouts of video gaming, but with a 9-year age difference between them their relationship can be a distant beyond sharing the same house and dinner table. The family as a whole likes to joke around and do things together, with neither her mom or dad being the type to lay down the law. Nikki's grown to mostly enjoy the level of freedom this offers, letting her stay up late online and not constantly nagging her to lose weight, since she does also know that she can go to them for help. Still, she does sometimes wish they'd push her a bit harder with life or help her with her anxieties. She wouldn't approach them with thoughts like those though; choosing rather to maintain the general good spirits her house provides and keeping a a cheerful point of view.

Nikki's also kept up with school productions at George Hunter, although that's the only extracurricular activity she's ever found a love for. Her parents began putting some more pressure on her to focus on schoolwork the last few years, and it's paid off with a series of steadily good grades, although she can't say there's any academic subject she likes most beyond probably English. Still, she puts in time on homework and projects, and has realized that she's got a good head for knowledge, although abstract reasoning and hard mathematics and sciences still don't interest her. She's gotten to like putting out essays and arguing points in subjects like history though, as they offer ways for her to creatively put forth her ideas on something. She still spends a good deal of time online, having moved from Tumblr to Instagram and Reddit boards for various musicals, where she likes to create fan-pairings and talk about dreams of seeing shows on Broadway. However, she's developed a few groups of friends to chat with both at school and online, and enjoys being an active part of conversations, putting in opinions and always willing to speak up even if she can't back up any of the points she's making. Nikki's learned from her parents that the best way to get ahead in life is to try to find a combination of doing what makes you happy while giving allowances to reality, and isn't too concerned about not finding a true career path or passion yet; after all her parents didn't hit onto anything tangible until they were well over 40. So she tries to focus on living in the moment even though she's got a lot of fears about the future.

Given that, Nikki will be attending the University of Tennessee in Knoxville in the fall as an undeclared student and is looking to take a variety of courses. She's decided to attend Knoxville rather than staying in Chattanooga as a way to live on-campus and experience new things, things she's often been too afraid of to partake in at George Hunter. She's rarely drank and never had any serious relationships with boys, figuring that as the overweight friendly music girl no one expects her to do that stuff anyways, even if she's secretly wanted to.

Advantages: Nikki's friendly and cheerful, with few or no enemies to speak of. She gets along with most people and tries not to brood on matters, which may help her survive the issues on the island somewhat. She's decently clever and not afraid to speak her mind.
Disadvantages: Nikki puts up a front, but can be very scared about the unknown, and hasn't had much experience with truly stressful situations. She has few truly close relationships and can be seen as disposable by most people. Most glaringly, Nikki is clinically obese and in very poor shape. She has no endurance or wilderness skills, and surviving for any length of time without major health issues will be a tall order.

Designated Number: Female Student No. 80

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Designated Weapon: 30 feet of rope

Conclusion: We were generous, pay it forward and hang yourself. - Veronica Rai

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